


Cerberus

by TopHat



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Dogs, Found Family, Gen, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat
Summary: Rachel finds a really... really... REALLY weird dog.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 45





	Cerberus

People were fucking bad at taking care of dogs. People kept dogs that need to run cooped up, tried running the ones that want to stay in place, fed them crap that gave the dogs gas and stomach rot, and when the idiots finally realizes that something was wrong, they just took the dog to a shelter and abandoned it.  
  
That was if the dumbass didn’t just toss the dog out on the street.  
  
Rachel growled as she pulled over next to an alley where she felt her power feed something. People threw away dogs like shirts, and she knew that no matter how many she managed to find there’d always be more out of sight, more in a different part of town, more that had gone to ground in sewer pipes. Rachel knew that for every van full of dogs she found before their bodies gave out, there’d be another three that were breathing their last.  
  
Didn’t stop her from fucking trying, though.  
  
Slowly, Rachel entered the alley, clicking her tongue, eyes carefully unfocused. So many idiots yelled when they wanted attention. So many idiots got attacked. She listened.  
  
A whimper, with an echo. No, not an echo. Three whimpers, overlapping, scared, not angry.  
  
Rachel walked forward, making soothing noises, hiding her teeth, slowly going down onto her knees, keeping her face passive even as a fresh shot of fury ran through her. Puppies. People fucking loved puppies until they had to take care of them. They expected the balls of fur to grow up in a weekend, to be house trained before the first mess happened, to never make life difficult. Fucking idiots. If you don’t expect a kid to be able to use the shittier on their own, don’t expect a dog to. If you’re willing to let a kid crash a car, let a dog break a vase.  
  
The whimpers came again, from behind a dumpster. Rachel could make out a paw, with long, uncut nails. Nothing immediately identifiable, but mutts never were. Something big though, something that would be above waist-height full grown. She made a few more clicking noises, slowly rounding the corner.  
  
Then Rachel paused, facade almost cracking.  
  
Big. Big enough that she’d assume it was full grown, even for a Great Dane. A tail twice as long as it’s body, tipped with a spur of bone. Black and white striped fur, long and ragged for want of grooming, and nothing she had ever seen on a natural breed.  
  
And it had three heads.  
  
The dog whimpered again.  
  
Rachel edged half a foot closer. When the... dog, didn’t respond, she slowly extended her hand, limp and palm down, lowering herself until her fingers were in front of the left-most muzzle. The snout was long, somewhere between a collie and a greyhound, but with a wideness that spoke of something bred for war. With effort, the head lifted itself away from the ground, moving towards her hand. Rachel prepared to pull it away, just in case the dog didn’t want to be helped.  
  
Instead of biting through, the head licked Rachel’s hand. This seemed to sap all of its energy, and once it nuzzled her hand the head went still, eyes locked on her hand. The whites were black shot with blue, surrounding red irises and leaking goop from the corners.  
  
Rachel moved her hand to the next mouth. This could only rub its nose across her fingers, crusty and dry. It whined, lips peeling back, not in anger, but in fear. The teeth were too long, too sharp, and Rachel could see marks on its gums where it had bit itself.  
  
She moved to the third head. This one growled, and Rachel held still as it sniffed her hand. Eventually it stopped, turning away from her, looking back down the alleyway.  
  
For a long moment, Rachel knelt there, staring. She wasn’t stupid. Three heads? Fucked-up eyes? This dog was power, either made or bred or maybe even fucking triggered, who the fuck knew, and you never messed with powers you didn’t know.  
  
Hell, was it even a dog?  
  
Slowly, Rachel moved her hand to the dog’s flank. The fur was matted with dirt, and she could feel bones. In a normal dog Rachel would assume that it had been starving. With this one it could indicate perfect health. The left-most head’s long lolled out, something like happiness. The center head whined once, hopeful.  
  
Rachel very careful did not look at the right-most head.  
  
Eventually, it barked once. Short, sharp, and sad. Rachel nodded, face impassive, and slowly began to stroke the dog with long, even motions, and thought back to her van.  
  
There’d be room. Barely.  
  
Rachel slid one arm under each pair of legs, drawing a few snuffs of surprise from the heads, and lifted, ignoring the strain in her arms. A hundred pounds easy. Probably more.  
  
It was fine. She’d handled bigger.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Lisa.” Even now it felt wrong. If Rachel had half of another option she'd handled things herself. Lisa was too smart, too clever, and she didn't like Rachel. Putting any amount of trust in her was like trying to pet a growing stray, and when Rachel inevitably got burned trying to reach out she'd only have herself to blame.  
  
Except wasn’t Rachel at stake this time.  
  
“Yes?” Lisa bared her teeth as she looked up from the laptop. Either happy or angry, but probably fake either way. She’d fold if Rachel moved forward, but if Rachel pushed too much she’d call Brian, and that was a headache neither of them wanted.  
  
“I need you for something.” Rachel fought the urge to run. Instead, she thought about the next job, the next place she could get in an elbow to Lisa’s ribs, a quiet ‘shut up’ Brian would agree with.  
  
“Mind telling me what ‘something’ is?” Lisa asked, an indiscernible tone slipping into her voice that set Rachel’s teeth on edge as she tried to figure out whether Lisa wanted an answer or not.  
  
“I need you to figure something out,” Rachel said, pacing out the words slowly, like she was talking to a new dog that didn’t know the rules yet. “Found a dog, need you to tell me about it.”  
  
“Ooooookay?” Was it a question or an answer? Was a yes or no really so fucking hard? Rachel swallowed down her feelings, compromising at a glower, and jerked her thumb at the door.  
  
“Dog’s at a warehouse,” Rachel explained stomping towards the door. After a moment she heard footsteps behind her. Lisa was following. She stayed mercifully silent for the whole car ride, flicking at her phone, letting Rachel drive in silence. She frowned at the smell of dog shit when they arrived, smiled at the sight of the dogs, and when Rachel took her to the back to the new dog her jaw dropped.  
  
“Rachel, what the fuck?” she whispered, staring at the cage where the new dog was lying down, slowly coming to. The dog lifted its heads, expressions varying as it got to its feet. Left perked up, unguarded and hopeful. Middle starred on, cautious. Right growled.  
  
“Peritax, Nero, Titus, sit!” Rachel said. It wasn’t loud, but it was hard. After a moment, the dog went back down, all six eyes locked warily on Lisa.  
  
“No, seriously, what the fuck?” Lisa murmured, slowly circling the dog. “This is tinkertech, made by a rogue who didn’t know what he was doing, fled tow a while back and didn’t let lose his chimeras, specialty is animal hybrids-”  
  
“What’s it eat?” Rachel interrupted. “And stop moving.” It was hard enough to convince the new dog to sit without something moving outside its field of view. Rachel had dealt with shelter dogs before, dealt with dogs that couldn’t sleep without their back to a wall, but this one was different. Different heads had different tolerances, and trying to balance their different wants and needs was a pain and a half.  
  
“Meat, raw, and only that,” Lisa said, waving a hand at Rachel but standing still nonetheless. Did she want Rachel to move? To go away? To drop? Why didn’t people just say shit? “It’s stronger than it should be, with claws and teeth that are harder than naturally possible, but it’s starving. It doesn’t want to hunt, doesn’t want to hurt, it’s got a thinker power that makes it aware of living things in the area around it, also serves to make the three heads work together, lets it empathize-” Lisa stopped, shaking her head. Did she mean no? “Rachel, this dog has human-level emotional awareness. Above human. I think it’s more emotional than most humans, too. Not pathological, but this is like the difference between someone with severe atypical depression and baseline, what the actual—”  
  
“Could it eat ground beef?” Rachel asked, mulling over the numbers. Meat was expensive, and she’d have to keep it out of sight of the other dogs. Special treatment would set it above the rest, and the scent of meat on her would make things complicated. She’d have to buy a different kind of dog food, a more expensive brand that also smelled like dead animals. Possible, but pricey.  
  
She needed more money.  
  
“Absolutely,” Lisa said. She turned to face Rachel, eyes wide. Surprise. One thing Rachel could understand. “Rachel, where did you find this dog? Who just makes an intelligent, empathetic cerberus and leaves it to be picked up by whoever’s walking by?”  
  
“A fucking asshole,” Rachel answered, narrowing her eyes. “Is it going to fall apart? Get sick?”  
  
“No, the dog’s stable. Sterile, but stable.” Good. Rachel didn’t want to try castrating a dog this big. “The gunks around its eyes is an autoimmune response, wipes out anything short of the plague. Wash that away and the dog should be good. It needs something to gnaw on, especially that center head, and something to file down its nails. Anything weaker than steel is going to break, and even that’s going to wear out fast.”  
  
“Got it,” Rachel interrupted, jerking her thumb towards towards the door. “Now get out.” Raw meat, toothing pieces made of steel, new dog food, not sick. Creator was gone and the dog didn’t want to fight. She wouldn’t waste time trying to teaching it how to attack, then.  
  
“Rachel, that dog is basically a person,” Lisa said, turning on her a new indecipherable expression on her face, one with narrowed eyes and a set mouth. “It knows that you’re angry, that I’m scared, and it’s probably trying to connect our emotions to our words it is connecting our emotions to our words and it’s trying to figure out our language holy shit Rachel this is a way bigger deal than some dog-”  
  
“And it’s not your fucking deal,” Rachel said. “Now get out.” Rachel took a step towards Lisa, blowing herself up, looming.  
  
Lisa looked at Rachel, eyes flicking from her to the dog and back and forth until Rachel just wanted to grab the smaller girl and make her leave. Eventually, she nodded, face falling flat. “Okay. I’m leaving.” Slowly, Lisa backed up, bending slightly, submitting. Rachel squinted. “We can talk more later.” Lisa let herself out the door, closing it quietly behind her, and for as second there was silence.  
  
Then a dog whined. Not the new dog, a different one. Socks. Rachel looked at him, and he sat down, mouth closed and eyes hopeful, tail wagging slightly.  
  
It was meal time.  
  
Rachel shoved the thought to her side and stomped towards the bags of kibble, fumbling for her knife. She’d feed her dogs, run them around, and figure out the rest later.  
  


* * *

  
  
The new dog, for all that it had three heads and the strength to crush concrete, was still a dog, and once Rachel knew what she was working with it was easy. She split its meals into three bowls, which kept Titus from trying to snarf it all for himself, stole a trio of steel girders from a construction sight for the dog’s claws and Nero’s teeth, and tore open a new wall to give Peritax the space to run around and play with other dogs, albeit only with supervision. After some initial fear, the rest of the pack adapted to the...  
  
Rachel grunted, frustrated, and gave Judas a scratch on the back of his neck.  
  
It was a dog, yeah, but it was also three dogs. Peritax was the most social, Titus the least, and Nero picked up on the commands the fastest. Somehow the body moved without getting confused, and Rachel wasn’t sure which head was dominant over it. As far as she could tell, the three heads basically liked one another and liked her other dogs, and that was good enough.  
  
Her phone rang. Rachel growled and clawed it out of her pocket, flipped it open, and pressed the green button.  
  
“What?”  
  
“We need to talk. Face-to-face.” Brian. Probably going to give her shit about the new dog.  
  
“Fine. I’ll be at the loft soon.” She started fishing for her keys, walking towards the door and whistling for Brutus.  
  
“Actually, I’m coming to you.”  
  
Rachel froze.  
  
“Lisa told me about the tinker dog. I want to see it, meet it. She said it was smart.”  
  
Rachel didn’t know how to respond to that, so she hung up.  
  


* * *

  
  
Brian was the boss. He didn’t act like it, not all the time, and Rachel didn’t think he enjoyed being the boss. She might’ve considered trying to be the leader herself, but didn’t want to try wrangling people like he did. Taking orders still chafed though, especially when they were given in her territory.  
  
“Lot of dogs,” Brian commented as he strode through the tide of fur and limbs. Rachel rolled her eyes. No shit it was a lot of dogs.  
  
“This way,” she said curtly, stomping towards the dog’s private room. Two doors later and they were there.  
  
Brian didn’t freak out when the dog started padding towards him, tail wagging happily, carefully. Instead he put out his hand, back forward, and let all three heads sniff it.  
  
“Big,” he said. This time Rachel snorted. No shit it was big. It ate pounds of meat every day and didn’t shit much. It had grown up nearly to her chest. “What should I know about it?”  
  
“Smart,” she answered. More than once she’d seen it breaking up fights between other dogs, and the days she came back a little late to meal times she’d found a bag of dog food already split open. “Smarter than some people.”  
  
Brian made a noncommittal grunt and got down on one knee, scratching behind the dog’s head. Peritax nuzzled his hand, while the other two sniffed him experimentally. "Not too hard. Seems friendly."  
  
Bitch bunched her jaw at the words, empty and worthless. How was she supposed to take that? Was she supposed to respond? To stay silent? Something impossibly in between? Was he complimenting the dog? Her? Insulting them both? Why was it so hard for people to just _say_ shit, to spell it out, to recognize that when they came into her space, took her dog, and then made these ambiguous _fucking_ statements that she didn't _get it_ —  
  
Titus made rumbling noise. Brian paused, moving back slightly onto his heels. Peritax gave his hand one last lick, and then the dog slowly padded over to Rachel, tongues lolling out happily.  
  
Slowly, Rachel put out her hand. Nero shoved his head under it, rubbing against her palm, and Titus rumbled happily.  
  
“Good dog,” Rachel said, choking a little.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Is anyone going to tell me why there’s a monster dog in the room?” Alec asked, lounging back in a chair. “Pretty sure they look different when Bitch ramps them up.”  
  
Rachel started to growl at him, rising from her seat, but stopped when Titus pulled at her sleeves, a small whine in his voice. She sat back down, settling for a glare.  
  
“Rachel found a tinker-created lifeform, took care of it, and it’s smart,” Brian explained, leaning over the table, hands clasped. “Lisa wants to see if it has any synergies with her power, maybe make our heists a little faster.”  
  
“I also figured that maybe it could do something for you,” Lisa added, once more baring her teeth. “I mean, have you tried a therapy dog-”  
  
Nero barked. Rachel gave the dog a look, lips pursed but not angry. The dog didn’t look worried or tense. Just attentive. Rachel turned back to Lisa, searching for something that made sense. All she found was relaxed muscles, the image of obedience.  
  
“Really?” Lisa said quietly, an uncertain tone in her voice. “Well that would explain a lot.” Rachel furrowed her brow, trying to figure what was being said. The dog was happy, if cautious, and Lisa had stopped baring her teeth. Nothing bad, probably, but she wasn’t sure if that meant something good.  
  
“Lisa, are you talking to a dog?” Alec drawled. “Do I need to call the people in white coats?”  
  
“Alec, this dog has a better understanding of humans than any human alive, which is a hell of a lot better than your pitiful excuse for empathy,” Lisa snapped, turning away from the dog for long enough to glare at him before looking back to the dog. “Also, the dog was talking to me. Talking to dogs? Now that would be crazy.”  
  
“We’re getting sidetracked,” Brian interrupted, another hard tone entering his voice. “Lisa, we’re hitting Fortress Construction’s offices on 19th and Larkway. What are we looking at?”  
  
Lisa smiled, teeth once more showing up. “Okay, so-” Another bark, this time from Nero, with a tad more firmness to it. Lisa shot the dog a look, something Rachel didn’t get, but put her teeth away. “So, there’s the night and day shift, right? First thing you guys should know, the night guard is way more beefy than the day, both in terms of people and training. If we’re expecting to encounter resistance, we’ll want to go in the day, then get out before the Protectorate shows up. On the other hand, your glorious thinker has found a route that-” Another bark. Titus, warning. Lisa looked at the dog, eyes narrowing. “Baby steps,” she said, before turning back to the map. “There’s a route that lets us avoid all but three guards...”


End file.
